About

Biking the Katy Trail in 2017

Well hello there! I’m Blue Tapp Scheffer. My husband, Craig, and I are bicycling nuts from St. Charles, Missouri. Just in case you’re interested and have a lot of spare time to kill, here’s a lot more info about our bicycling addiction than you probably ever wanted to know…

Craig is a quality inspector at Boeing and about three years away from retirement. I own my own business (Blue’s ArtHouse Graphics & Web Design) and work from home. One of the wonderful things about my job is that I can work from anywhere I can get a cell signal. So after Craig retires, we’re planning to travel all over the place in our vintage 1973 motorhome bicycling at every stop all along the way… Maybe we’ll try to bike in every state. Or how about trying to bike on all the rail trails in the U.S.?? We’ll see! The possibilities are endless!!

Biking in Prague October 2013

In 2015 we moved from Ferguson, MO to a lovely historic neighborhood in old St. Charles and a beautifully restored historic century home. We are surrounded by bike trails here and only four blocks away from the Katy Trail which is a dream come true for us. Historic Main Street is only a few blocks away as well with tons of restaurants and unique shops all easily reached by bike or foot. It’s a great location for our biking lifestyle. We love to hop on our bikes after Craig gets home from work for a fun 12 mile bike on the Katy Trail or over to New Town on the Boschert Trail and then finish with dinner at one of the many restaurants on Main Street. Life is so good!

Biking Trails in St. Louis

Fatbiking it in Alaska in August 2015

The St. Charles and St. Louis area is fantastic for recreational bicyclists with hundreds of miles of paved off road trails in the area and just across the river in Illinois. And due to the amazing efforts of the Great Rivers Greenway, more and more trails are being built around here all the time. The master plan is an interconnected network of off road paved cycling trails along greenway spaces throughout all of St. Louis and St. Charles Counties which also connect to the massive trail system already in place in Illinois. So for St. Louis folks the fantastic news is that bicycling around here just keeps getting better and better. Eventually Craig and I will be able to hop onto the Boschert Greenway Trail three blocks from our house and cycle hundreds and hundreds of miles around St. Charles and St. Louis all on dedicated trails. (For info about trails, here are some very helpful websites: Regional Bikeways of Metro St. Louis, Missouri Bicycle Maps and Routes, Trailnet, MCT Trails.)

Biking with friends and family for a weekend at Klondike Park in May 2015

Weekends on Two Wheels

When the weather is nice, Craig and I LOVE to go on weekend bicycle trips. We try to do at least three or four of these every year. These trips usually begin from our doorstep and end with us camping or staying in a bed & breakfast 50 miles or so away. Then we cycle back home the next day. We are unsupported tourers so we carry all our gear on our bikes with us. This blog includes descriptions of our gear and bicycle setups if you enjoy reading about those sorts of things.

Touring Adventures!

Once a year we embark upon our biggest adventures — longer bicycle tours! So far we’ve cycled the entire Katy Trail several times and cycled the C&O Canal Path and the Great Allegheny Passage in the fall of 2010. In October 2013, we packed up and flew to the Czech Republic to cycle from Prague to Vienna on a supported tour with Vermont Bicycle Tours. We just completed our third entire Katy Trail trip in April 2017. In the spring of 2018 we are planning to bike the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route in Spain. I’ll be writing all about that as it gets closer. Stay tuned for MORE TOURING ADVENTURES!!!